Dr Mayka Sanchez has a PhD in Biology-Genetics (University of Barcelona, 2002), with a focus on Hereditary Hemochromatosis, a genetic iron-overload disease. She spent more than seven years (2002-2009) as a postdoctoral researcher at three prestigious international research centres in Heidelberg, Germany (EMBL, the University of Heidelberg and MMPU), working on basic research into iron metabolism. Since November 2009, she has been the principal investigator, first as junior group leader at IMPPC (2009-2015), then (2015-2018) as group leader at the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC) and now as Collaborating Professor and senior group leader of the Iron Metabolism: Regulation and Diseases group at Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC)
https://researchgroups.uic.es/ironmetabolism.
Dr Sanchez is the coordinator for Genetics classes in Medicine and Biomedicine at UIC, and a collaborating professor in other subjects.
Current projects include:
- Translational Research on Congenital Dyserythroipoietic Anaemias (CDA), a rare hereditary anaemia, to improve its diagnosis and develop innovative therapies such as Gene Therapy for Type II CDA
- Basic Research on novel mRNA regulated by the IRP/IRE system
- Translational Research in the discovery of new human diseases and novel mutations in hereditary haematological and iron-related disorders
- Nanotechnology in haematological diseases and development of nanosensors for diagnosis and classification of anaemia at the point of care.
As an independent investigator since November 2009, Dr Sanchez obtained a total of 18 research grants (5 European, 10 National and 3 Regional) and 3 grants for congress organisation. Her group also obtained 12 national or international competitive contracts and 3 international fellowships (EMBO short-stage fellowship, FEBS postdoctoral fellowship and Marie Curie contract).
She has been awarded 6 prizes and is involved in 3 agreements with companies or patient associations.
In total, Dr Sanchez has 61 publications, including 7 divulgative articles, 12 chapters of books and 42 scientific peer-reviewed publications (24 peer-reviewed publications as an independent group, 12 as 1st author, 11 as last and corresponding author, 8 as postdoc and 9 as predoc), publications in Q1: 26/39 (66.7%). Total citations: 1887 (Nov 2021). H-index: 22 and i-10-Index: 31 (Google Scholar, Oct 2021).
Dr Sanchez is a board member in national and international patient associations (AEH, EFAPH), an elected member of ORPHANET and an elected Secretary of the International BIOIRON Society. She has participated in more than 80 congresses, most of which were international. She has experience in the organisation of international congresses, as an invited chairwoman, as an international and national grant reviewer, and as a referee and invited editor for international scientific journals.
Dr Sanchez is co-founder and promoter of a company specialising in haematological genetic diagnostics, named BLOODGENETICS, S.L. (www.bloodgenetics.com); CEO: Dr Cristian Tornador. They are currently working in 2 international clinical trials and have 2 registered European Trade Marks: HIGHFERRITIN since 18/11/2015 and BLOODGENETICS since 01/02/2018.